In a Tacoma courtroom Friday, Mikhail Linnik, left, listens to an interpreter explain that Terapon Adhahn is being sentenced to life in prison for killing Linnik's daughter.
Photo: Grant M. Haller/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

TACOMA -- In a tense, packed courtroom, the serial rapist who tortured three girls and killed one of them was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the chance of release after families of the victims excoriated him and said he didn't deserve to live.

Terapon Adhahn, 43, pleaded guilty last month to aggravated first-degree murder, 11 counts of rape, kidnapping and other charges. Prosecutors had agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for Adhahn leading them to the body of the girl he killed -- 12-year-old Zina Linnik.

"I can't imagine what kind of mindset one would have to go out and prey on innocents," Paul Kalchik, Zina's cousin, told the court. "She was just a little girl. A child. To go out, Terapon, and do what you did sickens me."

A short, bespectacled man who once served in the elite Army Rangers, Adhahn stared emotionlessly ahead. He appeared to avoid all eye contact during the hourlong proceeding.

He repeatedly shook his shaved head "no" when asked if he wanted to speak. A letter written by his young son was not received by the court and remained unread, and no one but Adhahn's public defender spoke on his behalf.

Even that wasn't much.

"There's nothing I can say that would (lessen) the pain in this case," said Adhahn's attorney, Richard Whitehead.

A former handyman and tow-truck driver, Adhahn admitted he kidnapped Zina outside her Tacoma home July Fourth, when she had gone outside to watch fireworks. He raped her, killed her and left her body in a wooded area near Silver Lake in eastern Pierce County. She died of head injuries.

Adhahn also admitted repeatedly raping a girl who lived with him and called him "Dad." The rapes, including one at gunpoint, began when the girl was 12 and went on for three years, until the girl ran away in 2005.

The victim, who told investigators Adhahn had raped her 150 to 200 times, now lives in the Midwest and did not appear at the sentencing.

Adhahn also admitted kidnapping 11-year-old Sabrina Rasmussen as she walked to middle school in May 2000. He repeatedly raped the Tacoma girl and left her bound and bleeding in a remote, wooded section of Fort Lewis.

On Friday, Rasmussen sat between her parents and faced her attacker.

"I know you don't have to respond back, but I would like to know why you didn't kill me," she said softly. The Seattle P-I normally does not name victims of sexual assault, but Rasmussen, now 19, has spoken publicly about her ordeal.

She told the court that Adhahn, who requested a jailhouse visit from his 11-year-old son last month, does not deserve to see his child.

Rasmussen's mother, Nancy, echoed her words. "I don't know if he understands what he's done to our family ... but (Zina's) family doesn't ever get to see their child again," she said. "So I don't think he should get to see his son, either."

Pierce County Superior Court Judge Rosanne Buckner agreed. After imposing the maximum sentences on 15 charges -- life without parole plus 811 months in prison -- she barred Adhahn from contact with minor children, including his own. The decision brought applause from the victims' families, one of the few outward displays of emotion.

"My heart goes out to all of you," Buckner told the families.

Zina had been a shy, academically gifted middle school student from a large Ukrainian family. Her father, Mikhail Linnik, spoke briefly of his pain through a court interpreter. Her mother, Valentina, had walked into the courthouse -- planning to watch her daughter's killer go to prison -- when she was so overwhelmed that she fell and had to be driven home, said Zina's uncle, Anatoly Kalchik.

"Can you imagine what kind of pain she is going through?" Kalchik said after the hearing. "Zina's family doesn't get to have her at home anymore. For him to have a chance to live, after everything he has done, it's sick. It's really, really sick."

He said the family understood why prosecutors had agreed to spare Adhahn's life -- done in hopes of finding Zina alive in the initial hours of her abduction -- but were still crushed that such a man will continue to exist.

Zina's death prompted legislators to pass two bills, later signed into law by Gov. Chris Gregoire. One law allows DNA collection from more sex offenders; the other lets authorities publish names of offenders who fail to tell police where they're living.

Adhahn, who emigrated from Thailand in the 1970s, had been a Level I sex offender, after violently raping his 16-year-old half-sister. But he had failed to register.

The case also created enormous scrutiny of how Amber Alerts are issued, after the Tacoma Police Department delayed the alert until the morning after Zina disappeared, when a promising lead didn't pan out.

Adhahn remains a "person of interest" in the 2005 death of 10-year-old Adre'Anna Jackson, who disappeared on her way to school in Lakewood. Her remains were found four months later in a field less than two miles away.